The Niagara County (N.Y.) Sheriff’s Office is making a 20-year leap in technology.

With the help of a $620,000 grant from the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, the department is in the midst of a more than yearlong technology upgrade that will allow law enforcement to quickly analyze and receive data.

The initiative will provide a software upgrade for an outdated computer platform used for dispatch, as well as in patrol cars and in jail records management. The department won the competitive grant, titled “Public Safety and Answering Point Consolidation Improvement and Enhancement,” to improve communication systems.

Communications were very different 20 years ago. There were no smartphones or tablet computers, mobile phones were too big to fit in your pocket, and computers were running MS-DOS, which was nowhere near the Microsoft Windows system of today, capable of running multitask applications. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was still in elementary school.

Niagara County Sheriff James R. Voutour said the upgrade was long overdue.

“We went with New World (public safety software) in 1995. We had been using the old version – Old World,” he said jokingly. “We’ve been due for an upgrade for many years, but obviously the funds were not always there.”

Administrative Capt. Michael P. Dunn, who is overseeing the update, said that the yearlong effort is a lengthy process but that a software overhaul of this type is not just “plugging in a CD.”

The technology update began last February and is expected to be completed by April 6.

“New World software makes us better, faster and smarter,” Voutour said. “We need to be more efficient, reduce redundant data entry, have information at the fingertips of our officers, and pull all public safety agencies together under one system.”

He said the New World upgrade will be for computer-aided dispatch, law enforcement records management, corrections management, decision support, mobile messaging, fire records and field reporting.

Dunn said that under the current DOS format, each search screen must be opened individually to find out information.

“You need to keep going from screen to screen to screen,” he explained. “You could conceivably look through seven or eight screens before you find the information. Under the (Microsoft Windows) format being implemented, it will be one click.”

Voutour said that with the new system, laptops in patrol cars will be able to have information automatically transferred to reports. The dispatchers also will be able to instant-message patrol cars, and cars will be able to instant-message one another.

This will not end the over-the-air dispatch communication system, they said, and only will be used for chatter between cars or for officer safety.

“You want the car next to you hearing where you are going to,” Dunn said of over-the-air dispatching.

Police agencies that are on the New World system will be part of the loop. The Genesee County Sheriff’sOffice has already upgraded to enhanced New World system, State Police are on the same system, and the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office is already dispatching for the North Tonawanda and Lewiston policedepartments, the Lockport Fire Department and other volunteer fire departments.

The Lockport and Niagara Falls police departments are not New World compatible, but Voutour said he encourages them to consider upgrading to a compatible system.

“It’s a problem because you’ve got three agencies (Lockport, the sheriff and Niagara Falls) that can’t talk to each other, except the old-fashioned way, by picking up a telephone,” Voutour said. “We think it’s best for Niagara County to be all on one platform, but I can’t tell the other agencies what to do.”

Voutour said volunteer firefighters and emergency medical service agencies are likely to see the biggest potential to grow, with new software and workstations in firehalls.

“This is something new. (Currently) we log their calls, but that’s all. They don’t have New World in their fire trucks,” Voutour said. “We got the fire software, so we’ll be able manage all their calls and they will be able to do a lot of work from some type of an iPad or tablet on the scene.”

He said that right now, they pull out a clipboard to log information at the scene, then call on the phone afterward to get information about when they were dispatched, and finally enter all this information into a computer.

“The biggest thing is that all the reports they have to give to New York State Fire (Incident Systems) will be generated by New World for them because they are inputting it in as they are going,” the sheriff said. “They won’t have to sit down at the end of the year and generate all the reports that they are required to file.”

Jonathan F. Schultz, fire coordinator and director of emergency management services, who is overseeing the fire update, said, “This will help decrease response times when every second counts.”

Heading out to the scene of a fire, an emergency medical technician will receive full access to dispatch information, alerts, maps and records. “It will all be at their fingertips,” Dunn said.

“Every fire hydrant will be logged, and it will actually tell them what the pressure is there,” Voutour said.

The jail records management also is being overhauled.

“That’s everything, from start to finish, when an inmate comes in,” Voutour said. “His critical information, his booking information, his booking picture. Everything about that inmate – his medical records, his suicide screening – all that information is put in there and stored.”

For inmates who have a history of arrests, he said, deputies can just update information on the new booking and it is automatically consolidated. “You don’t have three separate John Smiths that you have to go through. You have one, and it is consolidated into one record,” Dunn said.

“Information is golden for us,” Voutour said. “A lot of crime analysis can be done. If we want to run burglaries in the last six months, it is just a simple inquiry for us. We get a map that shows us. That’s what helps in the investigation.”

Previously, information had to be processed by computer analysts collecting special reports, Dunn said.

“Now it’s one button, and there’s the information I am looking for,” he said. “It definitely improves efficiency. It tells you where your key problems are. And it gives us real-time information. That real-time information is going to allow us to get it right into the hands of supervisors so they can brief their shifts.

“Back in the days when we used to write reports, it was up to the deputies to read through reports to know what was happening. Now, that is all done for us, and (supervisors) can immediately share it with their shifts. We can see trends develop in real time.”

Voutour added, “Once we get good at it, we will probably be able to pull up our crime trends for the week and employ the resources where we need them, see where the problems are and address those problems.” The next step, he said, will be expanding the regional crime analysis center.

The Sheriff’s Office recently secured a $15,000 grant from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services and, with cooperation from the Niagara Falls Police Department, it has set up a crime analysis center at PoliceHeadquarters in the Falls. The money will be used to provide office furnishings and technology.

Voutour called the site in Niagara Falls temporary and said that in the next few years, with the help of the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, the plan is to use the old army support base on Packard Road in the Town of Niagara to develop a high-tech law enforcement center.

“The cornerstone of this will be the regional crime analysis center,” Voutour said, “but that property is not ready to be developed yet.”